


Time for a Change

by lha



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 14:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15843393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lha/pseuds/lha
Summary: Greg comes home from work to discover that Mycroft is already there.





	Time for a Change

“Mycroft?” Greg called as he opened the door to the hall. He’d shed his jacket and toed off his shoes in the vestibule as soon as the door to the outside world had closed behind him, thoughts firmly on a cold beer and a leisurely perusal of the case files he’d brought back home with him. The smell of a rich tomato sauce as well strains of Howard Shore at a considerable volume coming from the back of the house suggested that for once his husband had made it home first however.

“Kitchen!” came Mycroft’s mostly unnecessary reply. Depositing his satchel on the hall table, Greg headed straight through and down the few steps that separated the airy extension from the rest of the house. 

“Hey,” he said, coming up behind the other man, wrapping his arms around his waist and pressing a kiss to his cheek. “What’s all this?” he asked, stepping back and taking in the bubbling pots, the chopping boards with carefully sliced vegetables and the half empty bottle of red wine sitting next to a completely empty glass. 

“A necessary distraction.”

“Oh. I wasn’t expecting you back for a few hours yet - I take it today’s meetings didn’t go well?”

“That may well be one of your greater feats of understatement.” An assortment of green things were swept into a pot from one of the chopping boards with more restrained emotion than Greg had seen in Mycroft since the Brexit result.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked, pulling another glass down from the appropriate cupboard and noting that this was a bottle from the ‘only Mycroft gets to pick from this side of the cellar’ vintage, poured himself a glass. 

“Not particularly,” Mycroft said, stirring the pot as though the contents had grievously offended him.

“Ok,” Greg said. “Is there anything I can…”

“I mean,” Mycroft interrupted, anger and frustration clearly bubbling to the surface. “The bloody gal of them. First I am summoned by the Cabinet Secretary, as though I were some lowly backbencher in my first term. Then I arrive to find the he’s there with the Head of Five and Six, but no sign of the PM, to tell me that in the name of _efficiancey, transparency and accountability_ , my department and my very function are to be outsourced to a third party contact and information management agency.”

“Sorry?” Greg said, lowering the glass he’d yet to take a drink from.

“I, my dear Gregory, am to be made _redundant_.” He said the word as though it left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. As though to rid himself of this, he lifted the wooden spoon from the aromatic sauce and cupping a hand beneath it, blew on it. Having taken a sip he frowned and then held the spoon out to Greg. “Taste,” Mycroft instructed, deftly thieving the glass of wine from his hand and swallowing almost the entirety of the contents in a long swallow.

“It’s good,” Greg said, returning the spoon to the pot.

“A touch of lemon I think,” Mycroft said absently.

“So, just what is it that they want to replace you with? A call centre?”

“A third party contact and information management agency. I have been informed that in this, the information age, a well constructed database with a slew of contact handlers could manage the work I and my team currently manage. They feel that a third party operated network of untested compound systems managed by some private entity would be a better choice for the the public than a shadowy single figure.”

“Are they utterly insane?” he asked trying to process what it was he was hearing, and emptied the last of the bottle in the glass Mycroft was still cradling. 

“Oh, quite possibly,” Mycroft agreed. “Sorry, I appear to have monopolised this bottle unforgivably. Do open another if you wish.”

“I’m going to have a beer I think,” Greg said pulling a bottle of Caesar Augustus down from the top of the fridge. “But really? They just invited you to a meeting and announced that you were being made redundant? Hadn’t you heard they were planning something?”

“I had… an inkling. They’ve run it from inside the Brexit program which I have been studiously not involving myself with. I mean, it’s utterly farcical to think that this will work at all but to do it before the greatest upheaval to the nation in centuries…” The fire suddenly seemed to leach out of him and he collapsed into one of the seats around the wooden breakfast table.

“Can they even do this?” Greg asked quietly, putting his bottle on the table and pulling out another chair.

“It seems that they already are. At one point I suppose I might have stopped it all but… Times change Gregory.”

“It’s going to be an unmitigated disaster.”

“Yes, but their misguided hearts are set on it and as I will cease to ‘be’ the British Government, as my brother is wont to exaggerate, when this comes to pass I suppose it will cease to be my problem. At least no more so, than if I were any other inhabitant of this fair and sceptred isle.”

“Whatever’s right for you love,” Greg said, reaching forward and with a hand around the back of Mycroft’s head pulled him forward to kiss his forehead.

“I need to eat I think,” came the muzy reply.

“Unless you want to throw-up several hundred pounds of wine then I suspect that you do,” he said with a smile.

“Let’s order pizza.”

“But you cooked?”

“It’ll keep,” Mycroft said. “I want pizza from that place you like.”

“From the kebab shop? The one near my old flat? The one you swore you would never eat from again?”

“Yes. It’s disgusting pizza but it was astoundingly good.”

“Fraid they closed a couple of years ago.”

“Oh.” The look of dejection on Mycroft’s face was heartrending.

“Not to worry, Greg’s dodgy food preferences to the rescue. I have a new favourite.”

“Is this where you eat from when I’m out of the country?”

“Sometimes… They do an excellent meat feas...”

“With jalapenos?”

“Extra cheese, extra jalapenos. Ice cream for dessert?”

“There’s already a litre in the freezer. I stopped at the Supermarket on my way home.”

“I’ll put the order in now then. Just as soon as you give me my hands back so I can work my phone.”

“Mmmmm comfy.”

“Come on, why don’t you have a bath? By the time you’re done, it should be here.”

“Join me?” 

“Anytime, love. Anytime.”

A couple of hours, a lot of pizza and another bottle of wine later and they were in their pyjamas, lounging on the sofa in the den and watching Blackadder III.

“You could join forces with Sherlock?” Greg suggested, smothering a giggle until he was hit in the face by a cushion.

“If by some small chance the world doesn’t end through the sheer incompetence of the Government and those working for it, then it surely would if Brother Dearest and I attempted to work together.”

“I could take early retirement or a secondment to a British Overseas Territory. I’ve always liked the idea of the Cayman Islands. We could live on a beach.”

“You would hate the Caymans - they are full of financiers and lawyers and I would burn to a crisp.”

“I’m sure that can’t be entirely the case. And you could lay under an umbrella writing some fabulous novel. Or a textbook on how not to ruin a country.”

“Hmm,” Mycroft said, shifting on the cushions so that he was more comfortably propped up against Greg’s chest. “I always liked the idea of writing a novel.” It was a quiet admission, a preciousness show of vulnerability from Mycroft that Greg would never dismiss. Greg wrapped his arms around him and squeezed.

“Romance? International espionage?”

“Science fiction perhaps…” 

“That sounds good…”

“Hmmmm. I don’t know if I can stay here and watch whatever happens next Gregory. Either everything I’ve worked to create and protect will have been for naught, or… everything will carry on regardless.”

“Then we’ll go somewhere else.” 

“I can’t ask that of you,” Mycroft said, stroking the arm Greg had wrapped around him.

“What? You can’t ask for me to travel the world with the man I love?”

“I can’t ask you to start again.”

“I’m not going to lie and say that I thought I was ready to retire before today, but you’re so much more to me than my job or anything else.”

“Even if I’m nothing more than an aspiring or failed writer of niche science fiction?”

“I will always love you Mycroft no matter what you do or whether or not the rest of the world realises how wonderful you are at it.” There was an extended moment where Mycroft’s fingers drawing shapes on his forearm and the Prince Regent making a fool of himself, were the only movements in the room.

“I’m scared Gregory,” Mycroft barely breathed.

“That’s allowed,” Gregory said. “It’ll be a huge change for you.”

“We could take a holiday first, a long holiday, before we decided what we want to do. You could take a sabbatical to see how like a life of leisure.”

“You want to go to New Zealand don’t you?”

“It’s one possible location we could visit.”

“You want to go to New Zealand and visit a Hobbit hole.”

“They have round doors Gregory.”

“I’m only going if you dress as an elf.”

“I am not drunk enough to agree to set foot outside our home in that ridiculous wig and ear get up.”

“My very own English Elf.”

“Not for public consumption under any circumstances.”

“All pale skin and long ginger hair.”

“I am losing my job Gregory, I will not be giving up my dignity as well.”

“Let them burn, love. Let them realise how wrong they were and regret it. Eventually, when the Official Secrets Act expires, some historian will come across your name in every classified file created in the last twenty years. The world will know that Mycroft Holmes kept Britain on the right side of catastrophe for more than two decades, as well as having been the renowned author who changed the reputation of science fiction.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading which is undeniably my first attempt to process some RL news (not that I am suggesting in any way that I am as crucial as Mycroft!).  
> As ever, I'd love to hear your thoughts!  
> lha x  
> @LHA_again


End file.
